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Topic: Moroso products (Read 5134 times)

I enjoy looking at vintage race cars where people have gone the extra mile and tried to make their car asauthentic to its original era as possible. Looking over a car where the owner has clearly disregarded the"old school" stuff and gone totally hog-wild at Summit, Jegs or Speedway Motors just gets me frustrated.Moroso was a company that was started in 1968 by a drag racer named Dick Moroso after splitting offfrom a partnership with Jere Stahl. Moroso was a much smaller organization back then compared to whatwe see today. They were a specific drag race oriented company with skinny drag race front tires, deepsump oil pans, cool cans, and fiberglass hoods and hood scoops as dominant items in their catalog. Theydid re-label Jones mechanical tachs and for the purposes of Historic Trans-Am, the tach related items areof the few things that might be visually appropriate, in my opinion. In the 1973 catalog, of which somepages are shown below, Moroso valve covers and air cleaners did not exist. They weren't invented yet.Note also, the company logo is the old style with the arrow head. The black & white block logo so prevalentwith today's Moroso products was also not used back then. I sure would enjoy seeing the cast aluminumand stamped steel Moroso valve covers and aircleaners find their way to the recycle heap and replacedwith period authentic pieces on the vintage Trans-Am cars. Just my 2-cents worth...

Here's the '67-'68 Stahl-Moroso tach. One of these was in the Lola that Penske used to win theDaytona 24-hour in '69. Jere Stahl was on very friendly terms with Penske since supplying himwith headers for the Sunoco Camaros beginning in mid-1968.

Hey Joe, thanks for posting that stuff. I've never seen that early of an example of a Moroso catalog. Rare item there. Can't be from '67 though as even the company website notes that the company started in 1968 and somewhere on the web recently I saw that it was Fall '68. Dick did have several speed shop type places earlier in the '60 but they never untilized his name in the title. Then he was partnered up with Jere Stahl (as Stahl-Moroso) in York, PA for a brief time before that disolved and he moved back to Connecticut in '68 to start the business we all know as Moroso. Most of what I wanted to get across was that Moroso valve covers and aircleaners did not exist in the classic era of the Trans-Am cars. They could have used the tach, degreed balancer and a few other items but Moroso was certainly aimed more at the drag racer. I'll try and find time to post all of the pages from the '73 catalog so people can see what else was available from them in that era. Is it possible for you to post any of the pages from that earlier catalog?

My old Moroso catolog could be from 1968 but the engine parts listings only go up to 1967Even in 1968 they sold all kinds of special parts such as custom made parts including an intake manifold with all the little tricks done to it for legal class racing.

Thanks for posting those photos, Joe. Seeing that first page of yours reminded me of the following story I saw on the C1 and C2 Corvette forum posted by GCD1962...

"After Dick left Stahl (leaving in the middle of the night with help by a friend) he opened up shop in a 1,500 sq ft store in Greenwich, Ct. I had just finished basic training for Navy Reserves and worked the "night shift" at the store. I was the first employee for Moroso Performance. Around this time Dick knew there was a market to mail order performance parts so he created the first catalog. I remember when it came back from the printer as we lined up all the pages (around 16 I think), assembled them and stapled them. That first catalog raised a few eyebrows as Dick used a model that was a friend of a guy named Seymour Balz. His real name was Pat Cunningham. Pat and Phil Engledrum put out a car magazine named something like Super Stock Illustrated and other car mags. Seymour got this bimbo to pose for the catalog and in one of the photos , the girl is clearly pointed at the oil pan with her middle finger which many people quickly noticed. with a number of "moms" objecting. The magazines published by Phil and Pat also were very suggestive at the time (today would be nothing), and when a mother would complain of her son reading such "trash" Seymour and Phil would respond by sending a photo copy of a hand with the middle finger well extended !"

Phil Engledrum was the editor-publisher of HOT CARS mag and SUPER STREET CARS mag (maybe others) and Seymour Balz was a contributor to those two magazines and maybe others. They were lower cost magazines , mostly east coast but have some nice articles. They did have rude but funny comments in the mags

The 1 into 2 adaptors and the shorty cable were used to run the mech rev limiters and a tach off the same tach drive dist.On the Chevy, you can run the shorty cable to the rev limiter mounted next to the dist on the firewall